Some North Nashville residents can vote on which project should get $2M, but the rules are limiting some ideas

For over 15 years, Ron Hamilton has lived out North.

From his view, new development hasn’t disrupted the Black suburban feel of North Nashville’s culture.

“So this area was basically an area that we could thrive in, you know, own our own homes and own our own properties,” he says as he takes a break from working on the inside of Gideon Army’s new convenience store.

Now, Hamilton wants the city to spend money on opening recreation centers in North Nashville.

Hamilton has the type of vision and passion the city wants from residents with its new participatory budgeting program. It’s a way the city is trying to empower residents to create the rules and process for funding community projects in an area the city has historically neglected.

But the city is spending only $2 million for the first round. So that axes Hamilton’s idea of new recreation centers.

Bordeaux and some Whites Creek residents are starting to vote on which community projects should be funded with $2 million from Metro. The proposals are all about quality of life and range from $1 million on protected bike lanes to installing air conditioning in the Looby Community Center gym.

Hamilton is hopeful for the future but has a general frustration with the city council.

“Y’all been knowing where to allocate this money that should have been in place,” Hamilton says. “It’s put in place in other areas.”

Provided by Metro

The city will expand the boundaries in its second round of participatory budgeting.

Participatory budgeting is one of several topics that shows the tension between the pace at which city officials are addressing urgent needs and the pressure residents feel as they live them. This pilot program comes after Black organizers demanded that officials get a larger say in the overall budget for working-class residents.

Middle Tennessee State University professor Sekou Franklin teaches and studies participatory budgeting. While he points to research emphasizing the value of participatory budgeting, he also points to the small budgets U.S. cities like Chicago and Nashville give it.

“When you say it’s spent on what you describe as quality-of -ife issues,” he explains, “you’ve already determined what is important for people, for them. So you are imposing upon them an established set of priorities for them.”

Small scale issues

While the city gears up to give residents a say in funding, it’s also working on several other projects in North Nashville.

“In general, the goal of the city is to address quality-of-life issues, Mayor John Cooper is interested in making sure that we do it in an equitable way and PB empowers residents to get issues solved in their part of the city,” Fabian Bedne, the city’s community development senior manager, tells WPLN News via email. “PB is mostly focused on smaller scale issues while the capital improvements budget and capital spending plan is focused on bigger scale structural issues.”

Research shows participatory budgeting could be used to improve structural issues, and it has had some success in Brazil, where participatory budgeting started in the 1980s. Yet Nashville is using it to focus on infrastructure projects that require little upkeep.

Bedne championed participatory budgeting for years when he was a councilmember, and now he’s overseeing the first attempt for the mayor’s office.

“I think the more participation, the better. It makes for a better democratic process and therefore a more engaged community,” he says. “I mean, honestly, it makes for better decisions.”